Is there a guide or resources to creating fiction and stories in the Warhammer universe?

[u/Saritiel]

I'm a GM who generally considers herself to be pretty strong at creating engaging campaigns that the players really get into. I love Warhammer, I paint and play Admech and Daughters of Khaine. I've run three Warhammer campaigns now (one Imperium Maledictum, one Only War, and one Soulbound), and each time I find that I really struggle to hit the fiction in a way that is satisfying.

It feels weird to say, since it seems like it wouldn't be too much different than creating it in D&D, or Legend of the Five Rings, or Deadlands, but I don't feel like I know how to create effective drama in this universe. I feel like every mission ends up just being, "There's the bad guys! KILL THEM ALL!". Which isn't the worst, but its also not as deep or as interesting as I could wish.

Are there any older books or any other resources that have good descriptions of how to build adventures? Be it Dark Heresy, or Imperium Maledictum, or Soulbound, or whatever. Or just really solid premade adventures that can be ran?

I'm gearing up to try to run another game now, and I'm just trying to see if I can make it better.

[u/Saphurial]

You could try reading some of the less war focused Black Library novels. The Eisenhorn or Ravenor books might be a good place to start, lots of investigation and intrigue.

[u/Messiahcide → u/Saphurial]

Going with more Dan Abnett, probably should add the Bequin books and Hive, both really great at showing the street-level universe.

[u/Saritiel → u/Saphurial]

I generally like Abnett's books, but I bounced off of Eisenhorn hard. Really didn't like the first book, started the second just to try to push through since I knew how much everyone adores the series, but put it down about halfway through.

[u/Saphurial → u/Saritiel]

You could try Lord of the Night by Simon Spurrier or the Night Lord's trilogy by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. Look at those scenarios told from their point of view and then craft a story for your players in a similar vein to work through and try to deal with an enemy that isn't going to engage them in a stand up fight.

[u/Messiahcide]

I would recommend reading the warhammer crime novels, and also the horror line. They are chock full of themes suitable for adventures. Crime gives us a heavily cyberpunk influence with noir and pulp detective vibes, and horror hits a lot of lesser (relative to the setting) slowburn eldritch and supernatural stories. 

Edit: I'm a dumbass and failed to read the full post. I'd recommend looking at the Haarlock Legacy for Dark Heresy, Chemical Burn and Voll Adventures from Imperium Maledictum. I don't recall there being anything that explicitly made for a good guide on making your own adventures in any of those lines.

[u/Bananenbaum]

If you dont like your missions end up like this, only set a very specific premise at the start of writing:

"Violence is not the solution to the problem."

Something that simply cant be killed or is simply too powerful for the group. Suddenly your perspective starts shifting.

[u/MurdercrabUK]

I find 40K RP works best in an investigative mode, like Call of Cthulhu IN SPAAAACE. That may be because I've played more Dark Heresy than anything else, but the other games are either focused on soldier characters (Deathwatch, whatever the Guardsman variant was called), operating at a level where player decisions should be driving the narrative (Rogue Trader), or just lack focus because they've tried to cram everything in cheek by jowl.

I say come up with a weird planet, come up with a mystery, and work backwards from "what happens if no PCs come along to fix this?" One of the best games I ever ran was based on a Bruce Dickinson album - The Chemical Wedding, with that sort of mythology/alchemy theme running through the lyrics. Each track inspired a problem the PCs had to solve, taking a session or two. Set the whole thing on a cardinal world, and it started off as just "establish why nobody's actually seen the cardinal in weeks."

[u/Kitchner]

Here's the thing, I think people constrain themselves too much by saying "when writing a 40k adventure I need to be inspired/informed by 40K material". People forget that 40K is mostly built off the back of established sci-fi and fantasy tropes. The elements that make it distinctly a 40K version of the trope is the satirical "grimdark" factor.

The problem a lot of people face it that they forget 40K lore is something that grew and expanded but ultimately served the purpose of saying why my toys are fighting your toys. A lot of the earlier novels (and many of the new ones if I'm honest) continued this idea and they are sort of action movies as books. There are exceptions, but lots of the stories are like action movies letting people sort of "live" the tabletop game through a book.

For example, let's take Only War.

Let's pretend you have two game systems:

1) Only War

2) A TTRPG with the same core rules as OW but it's set in WW1.

Why would the fundamental story you tell with these be different?

They are both about "regular people" who are made to/volunteer to fight in a war at a scale beyond what they could have ever imagined, where the lives of ten men in one squad mean nothing, and yet in their own way will be heroes.

To give a more specific example, take Saving Private Ryan. That is a film where a squad of soldiers are sent to bring back a Private Ryan because five of his brothers all died basically in the same week, and his honourable discharge is seen as an act of kindness by the US military towards his mother. In the end, the entire squad dies, telling Ryan he needs to make the most of his life given the cost to save it, a burden he clearly carries for his entire life.

Immediately you can make that a 40K story by simply flipping some of the details.

Rather than have it be an act of kindness towards a regular mother risking the lives of ten men for one guy who turns out to be a good man, you make it about an act of class privelage extracting the son of some noble house because his father has complained he's been put in too much danger. When he's finally found, he's not grateful, heroic, or appreciative he goes to just leave. Until the ranking commander says he will only let him go if your players stay to reinforce his desperate stand.

Or you make it an act of excessive and wasteful cruelty. Your men are told to find him but won't be told why. They track him down, see he's a cool guy. He hands out extra ammunition he secured for the operation. They help hold the line and extract him. When the players get back, the soldier is shot as it turns out he stole those extra supplies, and anyone else who used them is shot too.

From then it's just a matter of using 40K language and canon to describe the scenes players encounter.

So I always tell people to pick a system who's theme matches the type of story you want to tell (or pick a story based on the system you pick). Then read anything of that type, watch movies, play video games, whatever.

Then whatever rough story you have, just dial everything up to 11 and make it as grimdark as possible, and describe everything using the right terms.

[u/Saritiel → u/Kitchner]

Ooh. Thanks. This is by far the best advice in this thread for me.

I've read probably 40+ Warhammer books, played hundreds upon hundreds of hours of the games, watched the Warhammer+ shows, painted minis, read codexes, spent literally thousands of hours immersed in Warhammer. All the advice that's just "ingest more of the fiction" isn't all that useful to me. I've ingested a ton of the fiction, and I just can't get it to 'feel' right when I try to make my own.

I think you're onto it here, though. I'm trying to make a warhammer story first, and just tossing in elements from whatever other fiction I'm borrowing from, and that's causing problems. Instead I should make an (insert fiction here) story first, and then just toss in warhammer elements and flavor.

Awesome. Thank you!

[u/Kitchner → u/Saritiel]

No problem.

Dan Abnett in particular sort of does this all the time.

Gaunts Ghosts? Sharpe in 40K. Sharpe was a British TV show and just read the plot summary from Wikipedia:

At the beginning of the series, Richard Sharpe is a sergeant in the 95th Rifles, serving in Portugal during the Peninsular War in 1809. When he single-handedly saves the life of General Sir Arthur Wellesley from three French cavalrymen, Wellesley gives Sharpe a battlefield commission, appointing him a lieutenant. His first command is a squad of "chosen men", battle-hardened members of the 95th with a reputation for unruly and defiant behavior. Patrick Harper eventually becomes his best friend and is promoted to sergeant and later sergeant major.

Wellesley and his various spymasters, first Major Michael Hogan, followed by Major Nairn, Major Mungo Monroe and Major General Ross, find Sharpe to be an extremely capable and cunning officer and give him progressively more important tasks. Despite their backing, he has to fight against the strong prejudice of aristocrats (who often owe their army positions to money and social connections rather than to military skill) against an uncouth commoner raised from the ranks.

Sound familiar?

Gaunt was an orphan who became a Commissar who served the Warmaster Slaydo well and was commissioned to the rank of Colonel-Commissar (turn it up to 11), where he assembled a regiment (turn up to 11) of unruly and defiant light infantry who's home planet got destroyed (grimdark). The first novel is that Gaunt is contacted by the new Warmaster's spy, and Gaunt and his infantry are given a top secret mission which could change the fate of the galaxy (turn up to 11). Gaunt does this in the face of opposition from other, more senior officers in charge of him who are aristocrats and see both Gaunt and his men as common scum, so they actually even try to kill them (turn up to 11).

Pretty much all the details that hang off that are pure 40K invention but it's basically Sharpe but just bigger and more grim.

A load of the Ghosts novels are then basically just a series of WW2 stories set in space. Like one of short stories is basically the D-day landings and a later novel is the 101st airbourne drop on D day.

Eisenhorn is essentially Sherlock Holmes/noir detective. Ravenor is the same but with an ensemble cast (something more like NCIS or even Angel of all things). Both are fundamentally the same story though, which is an Inquisitor unravelling a conspiracy and getting more desperate the more they uncover until you (and they) question whether they have crossed a line they cannot come back from and whether the ends justify the means.

[u/TheBladesAurus]

Dark Heresy for sourcebooks.

Any of the Warhammer Crime or Warhammer Horror novels. Rites of Passage also great. As is Blackstone Fortress

The short stories A good man and Suffer not the unclean to live both seem plausible as inspiration for RPGs. (I have unofficial audio readings of both, if interesting / useful)

[u/Academic-Ad7818]

here's a tried and true method I found. When you have an idea think to yourself "Would this make a miserable gatekeeping chud 40k fan very angry?" If the answer is yes then it's a great idea and you should do it. Works every time for me.

[u/PauliusLT27]

Inquisitor articles are pretty good at that, many articles on building world and stories, but one old running theme is - take other works as basis for inspirations, not warhammer works, but stories from TV and movies.

My personal suggestion is good way to go about things is to take themes of the setting you like and go off there - In almost all of my dark heresy adventures in recent times, main threat had been some flavour of imperium made horrors, in few cases based on recent news at the time.

So unironically, satirical nature helps that, if you want inspiration, go look up news, find horrible thing, satirize it in your adventure.

[u/CrudeLord]

Check out HIVE if you want a purely civilian level book wjth a sprawling cast and buddy cop vibes - teaches you a lot about culture and life in the nitty gritty of the big hive city.

The Vorbis Conspiracy has film noire vibes and opens with a young girl taking a wrong turn in what is essentially a rave, lots of vignettes of low and high born life.

Flesh and Steel shows what the Mechanicum is like from a civilian perspective, the scene that sticks out to me is the investigators trip to the Servitor Factory.

Vaults of Terra if you want a few Inquisition heavy trips around Terra, you get to know lots about the throne world and the so on.

Pariah and Penitent are both good ways of getting familiar with the world as Bequin takes on 'roles' as part of her work, essentially like a infiltrator, some interesting concepts like thought pirates and secret societies are thrown in there.

[u/abookfulblockhead]

I think it really helps to ingest adventure design, rather than narrative at a certain point. I just finished playing OwlCat's Rogue Trader CRPG, so some of that is still fresh in my mind.

Sure, you have initial hooks like, "You land on the planet, and a sniper blows the head off the welcoming committee". But you also have hooks like, "The noble houses on your home planet are feuding, and you're pretty sure at least one of them is making a power play against you." That story doesn't really have a final fight - it's just chasing down leads until you expose the party involved... and then maybe messily execute them in front of everyone.

Or "You've found a thing that is almost certainly very profitable. But it probably also carries a little bit of warp corruption... How big a deal is that for you?"

Or, "The crew on the lower decks are getting all up in arms because apparently they want things like, 'adequate nutrition' and 'safe working conditions', and 'fewer public executions'. They've also barricaded themselves in Plasma Reactor 4, and are threatening to shut off power if their demands aren't met."

Generally, the Imperium should seem as much a liability as it is a patron faction. The Inquisitor you work for thinks he's "playing both sides", when really he's just bartered his soul off to Chaos. The commanding officers for your guard regiment are more interested in winning glory, than actually winning the war, and they're happy to throw your troop into the meat grinder to do it. The Imperium says you should blow the heads off any Eldar you meet; unfortunately, the Eldar actually know what they're doing, and so working for them is probably the best way to survive your predicament - even if they are unbearably snooty about it.

A good story will generally put the literal dogma of the imperium in tension with the actual smart, rational thing to do.